In the recent months, many major brands have developed what they are calling “Social Media Command Centers.” These centers are state-of-the-art listening hubs that allow brands to monitor their presence on major social platforms and be ultra-responsive to conversations happening about their company. However, with all their glamor, are these command centers really capable of delivering results, or are they just for show?

The following infographic, looks at three of the most noteworthy examples of social media command centers:

The University of Oregon’s Quakecave in Autzen stadium

Gatorade’s Mission Control at their Chicago headquarters, featuring custom visualization from STRUCK, Undercurrent, and Radian6

The American Red Cross Command Center powered by Dell

More of a visual explanation, the design does share some common points of data like number of employees and a relative scale of the amount of data being collected. It’s a good design that clearly explains this new marketing function to readers.

The URL link to the infographic landing page on the should have been included in the footer to help readers find the original full-size version when the infographic is shared on other sites (like this one). Especially a good idea since this was posted on their blog, and will get buried in the archive over time.

Reader Comments (4)

In an ideal state, businesses are able to make decisions based on real-time intelligence and use social data to inform product development and partner relations. Furthermore, "enlightened" social businesses are able to achieve real-time customer engagement by empowering all employees to use social media on behalf of the company.